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Good morning. We'll keep it brief since we visited with you twice on Thursday. If you missed the post-deadline edition of the newsletter on Thursday, find it here. Alright, let's basketball.
EVERY TRADE IN ONE GRAPHIC: What it says on the box. Nice work by Tim Cato to visually sum up a rather boring deadline day.
#FAMILY: The Clippers tweeted out a photo of an unsmiling Blake Griffin shaking hands with an unsmiling Matias Testi at Clips-Spurs with that hashtag. People had jokes for that, you'd best believe.
SCORES ...
UTA 89, WAS 103
CHI 95, CLE 106
SAS 86, LAC 105
NICE: That's a damn fine win for the Clippers, who will be adding Jeff Green in another day or two and Blake Griffin in potentially a month or six weeks. Plus, DeAndre Jordan claimed another dunk victim.
GET DOWN: J.R. Smith and LeBron James ran a fast-break alley-oop so nice King James started dancing afterward.
JOHN WALL! This is why John Wall remains one of my favorite players to watch, even if his team is depressing.
SHAQTIN': Garrett Temple tried to shoot an open corner three just as a gravitational wave from the formation of a neutron star billions of light-years away hit Washington, D.C., or something. Only advanced astrophysics can explain what happened to his shot.
MEET ME IN JULY: The Orlando Magic maneuvered to free up cap space for the 2016 free agency period. Why?
HMM: The Bucks were ready to deal for Dwight Howard ... if he'd pick up his player option for 2016-17 now, guaranteeing at least one full season in Milwaukee. He declined. Here's more on the situation from Marc Stein.
TOUGH QUESTIONS: Nice Alex Wong piece on Rachel Nichols, whose new NBA show on ESPN is GOOD.
VERY LANCE: Dan Woike opens his "goodbye Lance Stephenson" piece with an extremely Lance anecdote.
TRUE STRENGTH: Powerful moments from Monty Williams at the memorial for his wife, Ingrid.
ON THE AIR TONIGHT: Some 28 teams are in action on Friday. ESPN has Pacers-Thunder (8 p.m. ET) followed by Celtics-Jazz (10:30). Other games of note include Pistons-Wizards, Heat-Hawks, Raptors-Bulls and Warriors-Blazers in a potential first-round preview.
Happy Friday. See you next time.